About remarketing audiences in Analytics

Re-engage audiences that are likely to convert.

A remarketing audience is a list of cookies or mobile-advertising IDs that represents a group of users you want to re-engage because of their likelihood to convert. You create remarketing audiences based on user behavior on your site or app, and then use those audiences as the basis for remarketing campaigns in your ad accounts like AdWords and DoubleClick Bid Manager.

Identifying behavior

You can use broad behavioral criteria like having simply initiated a session on your site or opened your app, or you can use more narrow criteria like interacting with specific products.

For example, you might create each of the following remarketing audiences and engage the users in them with the following kinds of ads.

Audience criteria

Ad type

Users who viewed product-detail pages, but didn’t add those items to their carts

Ads for the items they didn't add to their carts

Users who added items to their carts, but didn’t complete their purchases

Ads with a discount code for the items in their carts

Users who purchased items X and Y

Ads for related item Z

When a user’s behavior meets the criteria you’ve specified, the associated cookie or Device Advertising ID is included in the audience. When any of the users with those cookies or IDs later visit sites on the Google Display Network or use Google Search, they are eligible to see one of your remarketing ads if you win the ad auction.

Overview of creating and using remarketing audiences

You can use remarketing audiences in AdWords and DoubleClick Bid Manager. The AdWords integration is available to all Analytics accounts. The DoubleClick Bid Manager integration is available only to Google Analytics 360 accounts.

To create a remarketing audience, you indicate the advertising account you want to use, and then specify the audience criteria.

If you want to use a remarketing audience in more than one AdWords account, link your Analytics property to an AdWords Manager account, then share remarketing lists. If you want to use the audience in more than one DoubleClick account, you need to recreate the list for each linked account.

AdWords integration

Create remarketing lists based on Analytics data. Build your audiences from Analytics metrics and dimensions (for example, Session Duration, City, and Goal Completions), and engage users who perform a specific sequence of actions on your site (for example, users who visited product page A and then clicked the “add to cart” button).

Enable Remarketing with a simple Admin setting in Analytics. You don’t need to make any additional code changes or add any additional remarketing tags to your site.

A remarketing audience must include a minimum of 100 unique cookies in order for the Google Display Network to serve ads to the audience. Remarketing lists for search ads must include a minimum of 1000 unique cookies. These minimum-cookie requirements are the same for the AdWords and Analytics tracking pixels.

AdWords remarketing tags vs. Analytics tracking code and Data Import

The AdWords remarketing tag and the Analytics tracking code require different implementation efforts, and they each collect different data. Analytics also offers Data Import, which lets you import a wide variety of additional data beyond what you collect with the tracking code.

In AdWords, you build remarketing lists from the data collected by the remarketing tag. In Analytics, you build remarketing audiences from any of the data you have in Analytics. You can combine the two in an AdWords account linked to an Analytics account.

AdWords

Analytics

Websites: You generate an additional remarketing tag for websites, and then add the additional tag to your web pages.

Apps: You generate a remarketing ID for apps, and then add the ID to your app.

Remarketing audiences are native to Analytics, and are automatically shared with a single linked AdWords account.

AdWords tags set the advertising cookies.
For example, a user without an advertising cookie comes to a site that has the AdWords remarketing tag, the advertising cookie is set, and the user is added to the remarketing list.

Analytics tracking code tags read the advertising cookies.
For example, a user without an advertising cookie comes to a site that has the Analytics remarketing-enabled tracking code, the advertising cookie is not set, and the user is not added to list.